“Imagine the feelings of the mahout, with a Tiger within six inches of his nose! the Elephant trumpeting, shaking, and rolling with rage and pain, till he was barely able to maintain his seat on her neck at all; and the occupant of the houdah, too, tumbled from top to bottom, and from side to side of it, as if he were a solitary pill in a pillbox too large for him. Of course, in this predicament, he was utterly unable to use his rifle to rid the Elephant of the unwelcome head-dress she was, perforce, wearing. The attempt to fire, in all that shaking, would probably have resulted in his blowing out the mahout’s brains instead of the Tiger’s, or in his shooting himself. Meanwhile the mahout, with the courage of despair, slipped out of the _gaddela_, or cushion, on which he sat, and, rolling it round his left arm, and taking the iron _gujbag_ in his right, assailed the Tiger manfully about the ears. But, being thick-headed, he did not seem to mind the _gujbag_ at all; for, after taking a bite at the Elephant’s forehead, he calmly continued his struggles for a footing on the reluctant and ever-dodging trunk, heedless of the rain of blows on his thick skull, and, no doubt, promising himself to square accounts presently by swallowing the mahout, _gujbag_, and all. But the Elephant was beginning to see that she couldn’t shake the Tiger off, so she tried another plan; and, making an extempore battering-ram of herself, with the Tiger as a buffer, she charged straight at a sal-tree, thinking to make a Tiger-pancake on the spot. But the sal-tree, alas! was a small one, and gave way under the shock, and away went tree, Tiger, and Elephant into an old and half filled-up _obi_, or Elephant pit, which happened to be conveniently placed to receive them just on the other side of the fallen tree. The Tiger and the mahout were both knocked off by the shock and fall; but the latter, luckily for himself, fell out of the pit, the former into it, under the Elephant. The Elephant now had her share of the sport, and gave the Tiger such a kicking while he lay under her, making a kind of shuttlecock of him between her fore and hind legs, that the breath must have been almost kicked out of him; then deeming she had done enough for honour and glory, and that she couldn’t eat the Tiger if she did kill him, she commenced climbing out of the pit, whose crumbled and sloping sides luckily made the scramble out practicable. The mahout, who had by this time picked himself and his scattered wits up, rushed round and caught her by the ear just as she reached the level, and was preparing for a bolt, and scrambling rapidly up to his perch on her neck, succeeded in stopping her and turning her face to the foe once more. The Elephant being now under command, our sportsman at length resumed his proper share in the proceedings, and the Tiger being still at the bottom of the pit, breathless, if not senseless, from the kicking he had undergone,